About Scientific Volume Imaging

Our company, Scientific Volume Imaging (SVI), has been a fully independent, family-owned business since its founding in 1994 and will remain so.

Our mission (see also below) is to provide the most reliable, comprehensive, and user-friendly image processing software package.
By combining tools like the Image Quality Control, which automatically detects issues in microscopy data, various restoration options that can fix these issues, the best state-of-the-art deconvolution for all types of images, and high-quality 2D-5D visualization and analysis, you are quaranteed to get the most reliable results from your microscopic images.

Specific deconvolution options have been developed for a wide range of optical systems, such as: confocal, widefield & brightfield, Spinning disk (incl. SoRa), Multi-photon, Rescan, VisiTech VT-iSIM, STED, Array Detector, and various Light sheet/SPIM microscope setups. This includes full support for automatic depth-dependent PSF measurement to account for spherical aberration, as well as bead-based PSF measurement to address system-specific distortions.

With SVI's Huygens you can work on many 2D-3D images, each containing up to 32 channels and time series. Work on your own lab or home computer with Huygens Everywhere, access Huygens remotely, or process your data via your web-browser using Huygens Remote Manager or via the command line interface. There is a solution for everyone!


Beautiful and true images are easily made with a host of visualization tools in Huygens like the MovieMaker, Ortho and Twin slicers, and the Volume, MIP, and Surface renderers.


Our very easy-to-use, fully wizard-based restoration package Huygens Essential is the task driven deconvolution package which guides the user through the restoration stages. Like all Huygens products, Huygens Essential runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

The deconvolution package Huygens Professional also deconvolves via a wizard, or via one single command in the operations window or via Scripting giving a wealth of choices.

Batch processing, included in both Huygens Professional and Huygens Essential, gives you the opportunity to deconvolve large batches automatically and to schedule them easily for a time when the work load of your system is low.

Doing deconvolution via the web for up to hundred(s) users? No problem with Huygens Core working as a powerful compute engine using web oriented interfaces like HRM. Made for and by biologists and physicists working on a day to day basis in image facilities you'll get exactly what you need.

SVI's restoration, visualization and analysis tools enable our customers to obtain and publish high quality results from nearly all types of microscopic images. Our products are used by researchers and scientists worldwide.

Mission statement

"Our Huygens Software is developed with the firm belief that reliable image processing is key in understanding the true nature of microscopic objects. For more than 25 years, we collaborate with expert microscopists around the globe to promote best imaging practices, and to further improve the user-friendliness and quality of our light microscopy software. Together with our extensive online documentation and high level of personal support we strive towards the highest standards of scientific quality, thereby contributing to a community of researchers united in their devotion to pursuit truth and knowledge."

History

Scientific Volume Imaging (SVI) was started in 1994 by Dr. Hans van der Voort who is also nowadays one of the driving forces behind the Huygens software.

SVI made a good start by capitalizing on Dr. van der Voort's experience in developing software for microscopic imaging at the University of Amsterdam. The name Huygens for SVI's main software package was used to honour the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695). Quickly, other talented programmers joined SVI to speed up programming and expand the available software for more microscopic techniques. Cooperations were sought with other companies developing state-of-the-art software for microscopists.

As deconvolution was still a novel field at the beginning of the nineties of the last century, SVI's clients were often pioneers in imaging in life-sciences. The software was developed for them and with them as their comments and requests were leading in the development of Huygens. This tradition is still kept sacred at SVI and will be upheld in the future.

Huygens Essential was introduced in 2000 so that also the novice user could deconvolve image stacks very easily. It soon became a great success as deconvolution suddenly became an easy matter.

Since 2003, next to its long-standing experience in deconvolution on many different platforms, SVI took major steps into adding visualization and analysis software resulting in a full solution for questions microscopists may have.

In 2012 SVI entered the super-resolution microscopy field by adding STED deconvolution to Huygens, allowing its users to get even better images far beyond the traditional diffraction limit.

SVI continues working closely together with pioneering groups in imaging and biological science throughout the world, both directly and in various daring imaging projects partly funded by Science Foundations and the European Union. Results from those fruitful cooperations can be found throughout all SVI software. Here you find an overview of completed and still ongoing projects.